Firing Back in Wall St.’s Reform War

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Americans for Financial Reform, a leading advocacy group lobbying for major regulatory crackdowns on Wall Street, released a new ad today coming to the defense of Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), who’s been under fire lately for his support for an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency and for generally backing greater reforms of the financial markets. In particular, Tester’s been taking a lot of heat from a secretive, deep-pocketed organization called the Committee for Truth in Politics, which has targeted Tester and called the financial reform supported by the Montana senator a $4 trillion bank bailout in disguise. (That language, you’ll remember, comes from a memo circulated by consultant Frank Luntz trying to torpedo Wall Street reforms.) Earlier this month, Tester called the committee’s attacks on him “flat-out false,” and asking to see the source of the committee’s funding, which it doesn’t publicize. “Our economy almost collapsed a year and a half ago because there were no referees on Wall Street,” Tester wrote in a statement. “Montana’s Main Street small business owners and families should never have to pay the price of greed on Wall Street.”

Here’s the ad:

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